


third time's supposed to mean something (take me home)

by ryter



Series: SBI characterization fics to cry about [4]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Adopted Toby Smith | Tubbo, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Brother Feels, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Chronic Pain, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Ghost Wilbur Soot, Grief/Mourning, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, Sort of Psychic Tubbo???, Toby Smith | Tubbo Misses TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo Needs a Hug, Toby Smith | Tubbo and TommyInnit are Siblings, Toby Smith | Tubbo in a Box, Tubbo can mentally feel L'Manburg and all the people in it, Tubbo is a Sleepy Boi, War, fight me, jschlatt is tubbo's father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28749438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryter/pseuds/ryter
Summary: President Tubbo wakes up with joints hurting and harsh gasps torn out of his chest, phantom pains from the explosion tearing through his limbs. In the back of his head, L'Manburg sings out to him, going through blocks and buildings and people alike. He just wanted his people to be safe, and instead, he has to feel his country fall apart.Or: Being President means knowing where everything is, even if you don't want to. Tubbo wonders if that's what drove the others to madness.
Relationships: Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Series: SBI characterization fics to cry about [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2084016
Comments: 30
Kudos: 221





	third time's supposed to mean something (take me home)

**Author's Note:**

> This work focuses on the characters within the Dream SMP roleplay and not the content creators themselves.
> 
> Beta read by Malaise_Incarnate and thank God for them, honestly.  
> [Malaise_Incarnate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malaise_Incarnate)

When Tubbo first stepped onto the podium of L’Manburg as President, he had looked down over the people and the city they had fought to take back and he had called the swelling feeling in his chest _pride._ He had looked from face to beaming face, all of them covered in sweat and grime, teeth bared in savage glee and victory, and his heart beat against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was _proud_ of them.

That doesn’t explain why, when the first bombs go off, he’s on his knees. There’s screaming, in the background, reaching him through a haze of confusion, but it’s not his own. His teeth are clenched together, pain rushing through his body, squeezing his lungs tight and shooting out through his eyes.

He’s never felt this pain before, even when Techno shot him and he was covered in blood and he couldn’t get his arms to work, even when Eret had pressed a tiny button and he thought the fire would burn all three of his lives in one go. This is beyond words.

 _Let me die,_ he’s thinking, _let me die—_

A Wither spawns, and Tubbo blacks out.

#

He’s not sure if Wilbur or Schlatt ever knew about it.

In the days passing Wilbur’s death, they rebuild L’Manburg. He notices it first when he’s still on bedrest, watching blocks being placed down below him and each new wall flickering to life as a tiny light in the back of his head. He could close his eyes and walk through the city blind and still know where everything is.

Sometimes, he finds himself remembering Wilbur’s screams when Dream blew L’Manburg up. They had laughed at the single block of TNT, placed at the border wall, laughed despite Eret’s betrayal still fresh and bleeding somewhere deep inside of them. If Wilbur had known, he wouldn’t have laughed—he would have been able to close his eyes, like Tubbo could now, and feel each block of TNT hidden under their feet. But he had screamed, and something had never been the same inside of him again, after that day.

Schlatt was gifted a nation and he made it bigger. He made it worse, but he still expanded, demanded more buildings and more land and more people. The only thing he ever tore down were the walls, and in the end, wasn’t that gaining more than you lost? Wouldn’t have Schlatt felt nothing but the rush as Manburg grew?

Tubbo _felt_ L’Manburg destroyed twice as his time as President, and he’s not sure which time was worse—the one he knew to expect it, or the one he didn’t.

#

He learns. Buildings are in his head, but people are in his chest—Niki on his shoulder, Fundy always next to her, the bakery thrumming behind his eyelids. Phil sits heavy on Tubbo’s spine, Techno marching up vertebrae when he comes to visit. When Ghostbur is around, Tubbo’s hands are always freezing. Tommy stays on his chest, grounding without being too much to handle, breaths always matching up in perfect fourths.

Schlatt is the only one that stays outside of his body, on his forehead, weighing his head down like an iron. Not a ghost, just a memory, but still toxic and potent and heavy.

When he wakes up in the dead of night, Schlatt’s suit laughing at him and phantom pains making him shudder, he calms down by going through each point of light. Here’s Niki, fast asleep. Here’s Funday, fishing in the moonlight. Here’s Tommy, just as awake as Tubbo is, so close but so far away.

He counts them all, again and again, weary and tired and rising with the sun. It’s an unusual thing, to make enemy of your wounds. It’s even more unusual to rely on them.

#

There’s too many things happening in L’Manburg for Tubbo to keep track of all of it. He loses count of the times he feels a wall being torn down, TNT placed under building foundations, and he’ll run the whole way with his hands shaking and find—nothing. Renovations. A prank gone wrong. Cosmetic damage.

He does it once with Niki, and it’s the first time he’s clear-headed enough to see the expression on her face. It’s not something he likes to remember, but Niki saw two presidents rise and fall.

One tried to protect her, in a selfish, twisted way, when it came down to it. The other tried to kill her. The third came bursting into her home for no reason whatsoever, frantic and trembling, questions spilling out of him like water. Tubbo wore a revolutionary coat before he wore a suit, and Niki is watching him with something like fear in her eyes.

He apologizes, of course he does, because that’s his job now. He’s supposed to keep the peace, keep his people safe, the people who saw him elected after the rush of a battle won and a battle lost, the people he counts himself back to sleep with. They have permanent black under their eyes, weary nights and nightmares they wake up from, flinching at fireworks and the scrape of enchanted armour. They need to heal, and Tubbo has to make L’Manburg a place for healing.

(Wilbur made it into a place of growth, a place to push yourself, for better or for worse, burning golden starlight until the only thing left of him was soot. Schlatt made it great, made it grand, made fear creep underneath doorsteps until Manburg was a copy of a copy of a copy, pressed suits blending together in a blur of shadow.

In hindsight, Tubbo should have known better than trying for serenity.)

When he feels George’s house shiver, the bright point growing hot and needy, he ignores it. He stuffs it away the best he can and focuses on what he can see and not what he can feel, promising himself to go check up on it later.

When black walls start being built back up, it feels a little bit like handcuffs.

#

He blames Tommy, first. Tubbo will always blame Tommy, in this world or the next, because Tommy is bright and glowing and heavier every passing day. Tubbo wakes up choking on responsibility while Tommy learns how to sleep through the night. _Vice President,_ Tubbo named him, but standing on that podium is something Tubbo does alone.

Maybe there is one world, where he doesn’t blame Tommy. He doesn’t blame himself, either, in this one—he lets himself heal first before trying to scrape enough of L’Manburg to bandage together. This Tubbo trusts, not just in his Tommy, but himself. George’s house burns and Tubbo is there to stop it, there to see Dream start to build.

Then again, in this perfect world, Dream never starts building obsidian walls. Why would he? L’Manburg is big enough, the people in it more than enough. Heavy on Tubbo’s back and chest and shoulders, but all the more welcome for it, all the more loved. Dream sees Tubbo as weak, as somebody unfit to rule, but ultimately as not much of a threat at all. He leaves L’Manburg to peace.

In a perfect world, though, Tommy and Ranboo would have never set the fire. Tubbo trusts Tommy enough to sit with him, one cold night on the bench, music playing softly in the background, and tells him about the lights in his head in halting words. From then on, Tommy thinks twice about whatever it is he does, because there’s very little in his world he cares about more than Tubbo.

But this is not a perfect world. Tubbo blames Tommy, and Tubbo blames himself. He does not check whether or not Tommy was alone at George’s house. The story continues.

#

The hardest person to feel was Phil. There’s a history, there, nights spent in silence with Tubbo insisting on calling him _Mr. Philza_ and Phil’s smile drawing tighter. Tubbo wasn’t his son—he was a stowaway, found on the side of the street, the only memory of his real dad saying _I’m coming back for you._ He couldn’t replace one dad with another, no matter how much he thought of Tommy as his brother.

Those nights, Phil would find tears trailing down Tubbo’s cheeks, mantra pounding into his skull, desperate whispers into the dark and the quiet. _He’ll come back. He’ll come back._

But he doesn’t.

#

Dream plays his role, of course, the two of them dancing around each other like chess pieces, blue and green instead of black and white. They talk about probation. They talk about spirit.

 _How did you feel,_ Tubbo thinks once, in a blackstone room with Tommy and Quackity next to him and a shining mask across from him. _What was it like for you, when the first walls went up around L’Manburg? Do you feel it too?_

He desperately wants to ask someone, anyone, how they handled this pressure. His joints start hurting, fingers clamping down on quills and paper sheets with a viciousness that frightens him. There’s a stiffness in his neck when he sleeps, a headache that never really goes away, knees popping while he walks. _Is this what drove the others mad?_

He and Dream never talk about it, not directly. Not until the very end.

#

“Dream, please detain and escort Tommy out of my country.”

In between one word and the next, the weight lifts off Tubbo’s chest.

It’s dizzying. It’s euphoric. It’s taking in the first deep breath for weeks, ribs complaining at the sudden lack of chains holding them back.

Behind them, Quackity and Fundy are screaming at him. They talk over each other, tossing around words like _trust_ and _treason_ without ever once considering the weight behind them. Tubbo is President, and his Vice President had threatened to push his country back into war.

(Tubbo bursts into Niki’s little shop and her eyes fill with tears—)

 _You’re acting like Schlatt,_ they say, and the weight on Tubbo’s head grow heavier, like phantom horns. He tells himself the weight is why he doesn’t look up, why he doesn’t follow Tommy as he leaves.

The weight on his chest is gone. He still feels like he is drowning.

#

In the days following Tommy’s exile, Tubbo finds himself at Schlatt’s grave.

 _I knew him better than you—_ that’s what he had decided to start with, during the funeral. Schlatt had been a bastard, cold and brutal, but there had been moments where Tubbo turned around and caught a strange look on Schlatt’s face. It wasn’t calculating as much as it was confused, like he knew Tubbo from somewhere else and was trying to recognize his face.

It wasn’t much, but those moments made Schlatt human.

He straightens his fingers, ignoring the twinges of pain. Sitting at the foot of the grave of a mad tyrant, his speech goes through his head. _I knew him best,_ he thinks, and resolutely does not think of the empty space over his heart where Tommy ought to be.

That’s not quite true. In the dead of the night, there’s very little else he can think about. _Does Dream feel him now?_ He wishes his lights could also tell him how a person felt, what they thought and not just if they were alive. He’s tired of second-guessing. He can lie to the others all he wants, but when it comes down to it—he wants Tommy safe. All he’s ever wanted was for Tommy to be safe.

He can still hate Tommy for forcing his hand, though, hate him just a little bit for ever naming him President. He’s allowed to hate Tommy, for all that he cares for him. It’s all he can do.

He hates Tommy whenever he gives in, slipping through nether portals and hiding behind trees to get a glimpse of his friend. He hates Tommy whenever Ghostbur comes to visit, chattering about nothing and everything, shoving a compass into his hands as if it didn’t hurt to touch him. He hates Tommy every time he hates himself, wishing he had known a little bit better.

He hates Tommy until he doesn’t, the last time he goes to Logstedshire and finds nothing. The wooden walls have been blown up, stone gouged from the ground, pillar rising above the cloud level and quiet. He can hear the waves lapping against the shore, a distant shriek from a mob in the woods.

There should be a weight on his chest, but there’s nothing but emptiness.

Tubbo screams.

#

The days without Tommy start to blur, each the same as the other, people tiptoeing around him with hushed voices and soft steps. In L’Manburg, it feels like Schlatt is President again, but the only fear in the streets comes from the ever-rising obsidian walls and Tubbo’s own thoughts.

Distantly, he can still feel the walls being raised. It’s just as this point, he doesn’t care.

He doesn’t try to fall asleep. The sun rises and he rises with it, eyes spilling over, brain pouring out of his head. His fingers fumble too hard to button his jacket up by himself. His legs hurt, knees and hips grinding against each other. He counts the blocks in the walls, above his head, and he takes breaths alone in a chaotic off-tempo, but sleep does not claim him.

He rises, and L’Manburg rises with him. All he knows is that his people are happier now, slowly learning how to patch themselves together. _A festival,_ he wonders abstractly one night, more sound than words, but it sticks with him. His people could handle it, couldn’t they? Would the sounds still hurt? Would Tubbo be able to set a rocket off, flashing lights and burning song, up on the podium? Have they healed enough to celebrate what little they have left?

He doesn’t mention it to anyone. It’s a seed, not a sapling, but roots are tentatively reaching out. It’s something to consider, at least. If not now, it can be done later. The celebration of a healing country.

It’s a day like any other. And then there’s news, a message rising over the houses, shouting _hostage_ and _help_ and _blood god_ and Tubbo is racing like he once used to and there’s the lake and there’s Connor with tears on his cheeks and there’s Techno with his crown and there’s—

His chest hurts.

“Tommy,” he whispers out. “Tommy, you’re alive?”

Tommy looks back at him, armed and ready, eyes narrowed and features twisted into a fearsome scowl. Behind him, Technoblade looms over his little brother, but Tubbo has never seen the resemblance as clearly as he does now.

“Tubbo,” Tommy says back, and his voice is as cold as the blue Ghostbur tosses to their feet.

#

There’s more, after that. Tommy loses his temper, shouts at Tubbo for never coming to visit, and Tubbo tries to defend himself with half-hearted words when even he’s thought the same thing. Coming to visit Tommy meant talking to him, meant listening to what he said, and Tubbo had done neither.

Techno demands his weapons, massive claws hairs away from Connor’s throat. Connor isn’t even one of the people Tubbo can feel, but he lets out a choked breath every time Tubbo steps away and his heart is already broken but there’s only so much he can convince himself not to care about.

He gives Techno the weapons. He will be screamed at for doing so, but he will stand firm for the first time since his inauguration speech and refuse to feel sorry for a thing. He doesn’t have everything Techno wants, but even when Tommy is angry at him, it’s a way to stand there and memorize the changes in Tommy’s face.

He’s thinner, cheeks gaunt in a way that ages him, dark shadows blooming on his neck. His shoulders are constantly hunched, even when Techno is behind him, hand constantly on his weapon. He’s skinny and he’s in pain and he stares at Tubbo with the same kind of reckless abandon Tubbo can feel on his own face.

Tommy and Techno used to be brothers chosen, closer than by brothers blood, but now all they are is bloody.

They leave. Tubbo does not follow them.

He makes a festival.

#

Tubbo can feel L’Manburg, feel the people, because all Tubbo has ever stood for was freedom. There is a difference between freedom from and freedom to, but Tubbo has always fought for the latter. He chains himself in rules and laws but never once thinks of doing the same to others, and he feels them move on when he cannot.

(This is not a secret, but the rest is.)

Wilbur was freedom _from_. What he felt was the emptiness around L’Manburg, walls going up in a desperate attempt to fend the crushing loneliness off. He didn’t feel the people as much as he felt the holes where people ought to be, and when Wilbur was chased out of his own creation, those holes grew until they swallowed him whole.

Schlatt was no kind of freedom. What he felt was a lack of control, living on the edge, snapping awake every night from the constant feeling of falling. Schlatt never regained his balance for long enough to realize what Manburg meant to him, but he tightened his fist wherever he could and drank whatever he could not.

This is not a secret, either: there were three presidents of L’Manburg, and each was given what they could never have.

#

When it comes down to it, there’s very little Tommy would not do for Tubbo. In theory, there ought to be very little Tubbo would not forgive Tommy for. They both know this—brothers or not, angry or not, exiled or not. It’s just a matter of time, but Tubbo has broken one of their sacred accords and he’s not quite sure if the other is still whole.

The community house explodes. Tubbo feels it on his ribs, like he’s been kicked down to the ground, and has to bite his tongue not to shout. Panicking the people won’t do any good in the long run. He has to remain calm.

That doesn’t do much.

Dream gets there before Tubbo has a chance to say anything. What’s worse, he does it in the worst way possible, words ambiguous and tone dark, until everyone is ready to hide and Tubbo is almost biting through his tongue entirely not to snarl. The way he wants to talk to Dream sometimes scares him—something dark is inside of him, deep down where nothing touches him, the only part of him left that is completely his own. _Mine,_ it whispers, insidious and curling. _Mine to protect. How dare you._

They’re all piled one on top of the other, water pouring down, and when Dream demands the discs Tommy comes flying out of nowhere as if Tubbo isn’t _furious_ with him. It’s something that feels like Tommy, and George’s house is still a burnt husk on Tubbo’s conscience. They’re surrounded by people that deserve better than Tubbo can give them.

He takes the disc out and Tommy snarls at him.

“For once in your life, trust me,” Tommy spits out, as if Tubbo had not put everything on his friend and had got nothing out of it.

“I did trust you,” Tubbo responds. “Once.”

Tommy hits first. Brash and impulsive, he charges in, and the darkness inside of Tubbo is snarling back. Tommy is shouting at him as they rain blows, and Tubbo pushes forward, uncaring of the hits that strike true.

Tubbo has gone through every day in more pain than he can imagine since the day he became President, and he has learned how to carry himself in spite of it. This is nothing.

“You betrayed me,” Tommy shouts, and Tubbo strikes again with something ugly in his throat.

“I didn’t betray you,” he says through the blood, teeth sharp.

“The discs were worth more than you ever were!” Tommy shouts back, incandescent in rage, and there is a moment where Tubbo feels nothing at all.

He’s in shock, staring at Tommy and the words rattling in his skull, but he can see the same shock in Tommy. More than that—

More than that, there is the slightest pressure on Tubbo’s chest.

“Tubbo,” Tommy says, stepping forward, hands outstretched. The pressure grows. “Tubbo?”

He’s not sure what he responds, or what happens from then on. He gives Dream the disk, and even then, Tommy steps next to Tubbo like it’s a reflex, like it’s a given.

And it is. There will never be a moment where Tubbo’s first reaction would not be to fall in place, next to Tommy, brothers ready to face on the world. But this time, Tommy is the one who comes to Tubbo, cracked apologies in his throat and eyes empty.

“I’m not the person I want to be,” Tommy murmurs, voice twisting, and the weight slots back into place like it had never left. “I’m worse than everyone I didn’t want to be.”

And that’s it. Fixed.

“I just want to say,” Dream cuts in, “that you’re an _idiot._ ”

Or, well. it _should_ have fixed things. It doesn’t.

Dream gives them a countdown. Technoblade gives them a warning. Tommy gives them three chests and orders they can follow, preparation to the end of a world coming twice over. Even as Tommy takes control, separating communal supplies, pleading with Niki and Sapnap as the countdown ticks down, he keeps looking to Tubbo for confirmation. For advice.

They don’t have the time for much more than a song on the bench, a few parting words, but they breathe in perfect fourths and it’s all Tubbo needs.

#

Tommy called Tubbo _brother_ right from the start.

Techno doesn’t. Neither does Wilbur. And that’s fine. Techno was never his brother. Neither was Wilbur, just like how Phil was never his father. Tubbo is the only one of them who has a father somewhere else, and he can wait until the end of the earth without giving up. He has to.

But Tommy finds Tubbo in a box, hair messy and tacky, and lights up. He’s missing a tooth and he yells at the top of his voice and says fifty different things in the first minute, but it’s right then and there that Tommy announces Tubbo as his new brother.

It takes Tubbo a bit longer. The first few nights he sleeps at Phil’s house, on Tommy’s floor, he tentatively thinks _friend._ Then they go swimming, and he thinks it again, a little harder, _friend._

It’s not until they get in trouble, and instead of hiding behind something, Tubbo is right next to Tommy, shoulder to shoulder, that he lets himself turn and think _oh. So this is what it means to have a brother._

He can wait for his dad to come back. He will.

But he can have a brother, too.

#

Trying your best really means nothing when you fail.

Tubbo’s in shock. He knows he’s in shock, but it’s different, knowing something and experiencing something. He had spent the last twenty-three hours exactly mentally preparing for the pain he was about to feel, lights flickering out as people died. But this time, when something gets destroyed, the pain gets numbed out. There’s nothing left to feel pain, haunting emptiness tugging on raw edges inside him.

His head hurts. He’s so, so cold.

But having Techno be the one to ally with Dream, having Phil be the one to place TNT blocks over his own house, that doesn’t hurt Tubbo in the same way it hurts Tommy.

They’re up on the obsidian lattice, intertwining lines of lies and cowardice and desperation beneath their feet. Tubbo is barely upright, swaying, leaning into Tommy. His head is spinning, his centre of gravity shifting, more and more lost to the pit.

 _The unfinished symphony,_ Dream says, and Tommy trembles next to him.

“Couldn’t have you just burnt the discs?” Tommy chokes out, and oh, he’s crying too, explosions shaking the foundation. “Couldn’t have you just done this to me?”

“Well,” Dream says, standing in front of them. “This is much more fun.”

When Dream finally leaves, he stops in front of Tubbo. The black dots peer into Tubbo’s soul, chills running down his spine.

“How does it feel?” Dream asks, each word carefully chosen. The mask cocks to the side, calculating. “I’ve always thought of it as feeling light. Like a weight taken off your back.”

At that moment, Tubbo wants to scream. He wants to demand an axe so he could give Dream a demonstration of just how it feels, to have a limb ripped away from you. He doesn’t have enough left inside of him to do either.

“Something like that, yeah,” he says instead. This is answer enough. It is, of course, no answer at all.

Dream still leaves them with a broken crater of a city and a handful of people. This, too, is enough. He leaves them with nothing to lose.

#

When all is said and done, Tubbo can still feel the people. Not all of them—Niki flickers in and out of existence, Fundy following her with a loyalty he learned at his father’s knee. His hands are too hot. The horns on his head only feel heavy at night, when he’s alone. But there is a weight on his chest again, and he welcomes suffocation. There are far worse ways of dying than with friends.

L’Manburg is gone. There’s not enough left to bandage it back together, but the people are still here. Sometimes, he wonders why he can still feel them, why they didn’t vanish along with the buildings they had made together or the songs they had sung. Maybe it’s meant to be a sign.

Tubbo felt L’Manburg blow up twice. The day afterward the second time, he finds himself looking out at the sun bleeding outwards, with Tommy steadfast next to him and his people a comforting weight behind him.

They’re Tommy and Tubbo, Achilles and Patroclus, brothers chosen in blood and bond alike. Forever entwined and loyal, until the bitter end.

As he stands with his best friend, he thinks— _well. Third time’s the charm._

**Author's Note:**

> ...sorry
> 
> I got the idea "hey what if being President meant you could literally feel the entire country in your head??? would that be fucked up or what" and then gave Tubbo chronic pain. Poor boy. He's trying his best. Then I tried to watch season two of Handmaid's Tale and barely got through ep 2 but one line stuck with me SO HARD that I just had to use it (so props to the "freedom from and freedom to" line). Tubbo is an honorary SBI fight me. Enjoy!


End file.
